US2659562A - Method and apparatus for depositing a weighed fill in a receptacle - Google Patents

Description

Nov. 17, 1953 D. E. LOUD ETAL. 2,659,562

' METHOD AND A OR DEPOS NG RA F 4 A WEIGHED FILL A RECEPTA Filed Jan. 31, 1950 4 Sheets-Sheet 1 IN V EN TORS.

gmald 67 KM.

D. E. CLOUD ET AL METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DEPOSITING Nov. 17, 1953 A WEIGHED FILL IN A RECEPTACLE 4 Sheets-Sheet 35 Filed Jan. 51,- 1950 m m m m NOV. 17, 1953 D. CLOUD r 2,659,562

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DEPOSITING A WEIGHED FILL IN A RECEPTACLE Filed Jan. 31, 1950 4 Sheets-Sheet 4 IN VEN TORS.

Patented Nov. 17, 1953 METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DEPOSITING A WEIGHED FILL IN A BECEPTACLE Donald E. Cloud and William S. Cloud, Wilmette,

111.; said Donald E. Cloud assignor to said William S. Cloud Application January 31, 1950, Serial No. 141,522

11 Claims.

lhis invention relates to a new and improved apparatus for depositing in a receptacle a fill of predetermined weight.

Although the invention is illustrated and described herein relating to the packaging of nuts, it should be understood that this is illustrative only and that the principles of the invention can be applied to any fill which will flow by gravity and which small enough to be contained entirely within the pockets on the filling drum, whether the fill be a powdery substance such as sugar, soap chips or the like or small particles such as nuts, pieces of popcorn or the like, or even a liquid.

Several methods and machines have already been proposed for making up a fill to a predetermined weight a weighing process and de positing it in a receptacle. None appear to provide a fast, accurate machine suitable for a production line.

The present invention accomplishes this with the aid, of a filling drum which initially feeds an almost complete fill and then dribbles small additions thereto. A scale weighing the accumulated fill trips a weight has been reached so that thereafter the dribbles are diverted; A quick-acting throv over device ensures accuracy.

While the scale is performing its weighing function it performs no other work has the greatest possible dependability in accurate weighing.

In order to illustrate the respective steps of the invention, the accompanying drawings have been provided in which:

Figure 1 fragmentary view of an apparatus for practicing the invention, shown mainly in vertical section, some details being omitted for clarity.

Figure 2 a similar view of the lower portion of the apparatus seen in Fi ure 1 illustrating the releasing of the weighed-out fill.

Figure 3 is a top view of several of the balance beams and associated parts, some details being omitted for clarity, the weighing bucket uppermost on the sheet being in emptying position, the others in receiving position.

Figure 4 is a side elevation of the apparatus illustrating the motivating means.

Figure 5 is a perspective exploded view of the balance beam and associated parts.

Figure 6 is a .detailsectional view through the weighing bucket, taken approximately on the line 5-5 of Figure 1.

Figure '7 is an end view of a beam weightv deflector when the right and hence mounted on and turned by shat 2.

Although the law requires a full and exact description of at least one form of the invention, such as that which follows, it is, of course, the purpose of a patent to cover each new inventive concept therein no matter how it may later be disguised by variations in form or additions of further improvements; and the appended claims are intended to accomplish this purpose by particularly pointing out the parts, improvements or combinations in which the inventive concepts are found.

General description Referring to Figure l, a filling drum l is One or more series of recesses or pockets are provided in the surface of filling drum I, only one being in the section chosen for the drawings. Preferably the first pocket 3 of each series is of such size that when levelly filled the fill therein will weigh just short of the desired weight, and each of the remaining pockets i are of such size that when levelly filled the fill of each pocket will be a fraction of the difference between the weight of the fill of the first pocket and the desired weight but the total weight of the fill of all the remaining pockets will be enough more than said difference to allow a safe margin in case the fill is of exceptionally low density.

All of the pockets are so shaped that as the rotation of filling drum carries them by hopper ll they will pick up and retain a fill which is leveled by brush l mounted on shaft 8. Further rotation of filling drum. I permits the fill to fall into weighing pan or bucket Q positioned beneath each series of pockets. To ensure that the fill will drop into bucket 9, a downwardly sloping shelf it may be provided. However, the bottoms of the pockets are sloped rearwardly enough to empty the pockets at a high enough point so that the fill will mostly fall directly into bucket 9.

Bucket 9 is provided with a back or divider l2 and is pivotally mounted on balance beam I3 well in advance thereof so that the fill will automatically tend to center near the rear of weighing compartment l i so as not to dump it prematurely. The material falls uniformly enough to minimize any inaccuracy in weighing which varying positioning of the fill in the weighing compartment might cause. This centering action may be furthered by biasing downwardly to the position shown the rear of compartment M by side wall extensions [6. It is desirable to provide stop i1 so the bucket will always come to rest in the same position. The long weighing changes in position of the of the lead relatively .111 ref 'a-blv temporary support iii ture tilting of the the balance 13 n. downwardly so that roller roclis bucket El to spill the weighed on. The

structure the .e such that this fill will pass mediately down. chute 19 into receptacles ill posttioned therebelow, or an intermediate bin or holding ll) may provided as preferred when acrelease of the fill is desire for any reason. eptacles 2i could be the oeptacles ultimate to be filled, but have been shown as part or a conveyor.

After the i3 tips and bucket swings to the position, the dribbles from subsequent no all on divider now swung to a do and rearward angle as shown in Figure ani pass down between side wall on tensions it, "own chute 223 to a storage bin (not shown) from which they can be returned to hop per any desired means.

Accuracy in to a large it ht upon the 'th wli ch delivery or iaterial to the w ment is interi .pted after the "ll 7 to tilt the scales. Several f atures of the a paratus are directed toward attaining the desirable speed. One feature is the positioning of weighing bucket 9 on balance barn Balance beam pivotally mounted on pivot has counterweig' t mounted close to the pivot point and eighing bucket ll mounted as away fro i the 1: point as is convenient in the design of the appantus. Counterweight 2e; preferably is screwed onto balance beam it and here. by airbagnwed pin 2'5 applied to the ore-- propriate reoe s 233 in its end, so that a delicate adjustment may be maintained. Thus, balance beam itself will react very quickly to the do- An additional feature is the prov; on of means for throwing balance bear it do; y soon as commences to t 't. The least tilting beam it causes lrn e bly mounted at the end of beam. it!

i by thumb screw to en -eel rotating on i ia'ft w. 11 e beain iii clow-.=.vardly faster than 1". one to gravity alone, to prevent .01131 fill from remaining pool rots 1 to weighing bucket At the end oi each weighing operation whee. 32 is swung away from balance it that counterweight it can position it for the neat weighing operation.

more fills are required than can thus be weighed out with balance bears, a plurality of independently acting balance beams l3 and associated parts in by side 'elationship can be provided, as is best illustrated in Figure 3. A single filling drum 1 may have a series of pockets over each balance beam i3.

Drive mechanism The apparatus, as best illustrated in Figure 4;, is shown driven from a single motor by a iseries of chains. Modifications whereby several motors, belts or gears are provided are within the scope of the invention.

Drum 1 is shown driven in a counter-clockwise direction by chain 3S, passing around sprocket Zi'i mounted on shaft of motor 39 and sprocket ll mounted on shaft 2.

Brush l is driven in a counter-clockwise di rection by roller chain ii-i, passing around sprocket mounted on shaft it and sprocket 4 mounted on shaft 53.

Gear mounted on shaft ll and driven in a counter clockwise direction by chain it, passing around sprocket 49 mounted on shaft 4"! and sprocket 5i mounted on shaft meshes with gear 52 mounted on shaft to drive toothed wheel 32 in a clockwise direction.

Shaft is mounted in bearing blocks mounted on lever arm 54 which is pivotally mounted on and may oscillated bifurcated lever slidably guided by shaft The outwardly swinging action of wheel de scribed above, which allows balance beam 13 to be repositioned for the following weighing oper-- ation, is caused by the action or cam 59; on cam follower roller mounted. on lever 55. Wheel is returned to position for the following weighing by spring 55!, biasing lever inwardly.

Support it; may be swung upwardly at the appropriate time to provide support for balance beam it, as described above. To this end bell crank lever Si carrying support It and pivotally mounted on shaft E2 is pivoted to swing holder Iii up to supporting position by the outward movement of lever arm with which it has a bifurcated connection. Lever arm 53, pivotaliy supported by pin mounted on the frame, is moved outwardly by the action of cam 67, rotating with shaft 2, on cam follower cc, mounted on lever arm 63. A soft pad is on support If a holding bin Zii is desired, its bottom ll mounted on shaft it may be pivoted to empty the bin by the outward motion of bifurcated lever 55, described above, acting through le or arm l9 and lever arm which is pivotally Sill?" ported by pin 32 mounted on the frame and connected with shaft by lever 6S and This permits accurate timing oi the dis-- charge, a feature especially desirable for (if. charging into a conveyor when its receptacles are properly positioned.

Further details As seen in Figure 5, balance beam may be supported by sleeve it which may be pivoted 2y bearings ill in its opposite ends. These bearings may be ball bearing units with the inner races pressed on pivot reduced at both ends to fit in bearing cups formed by screws 3:5. Screws till are adjustable in brackets to to have a smooth bearing engagement with pivot Both this bearing and the ball bearing must fail before any great inaccuracy results. The parts of beam 13 extending in opposite directions from sleeve 36 may be welded in recesses in the sleeve.

A seal fol the bottom of bin ii may conveniently be formed by a brush M as shown in Figures 1 and 2.

A guard plate Q2 may be positioned in front of bucket 9, but not quite touching it, to stop the occasional nut or the like which might otherwise bounce out of the bucket.

Smooth tipping action of bucket 9 as it is lowered against roller 22 may be ensured by placing a block 83 to roll on roller An important featur of the invention is the fact that the scale is afforded the utmost dependability because of the fact that the weight of the material in the scale pan 9 is not required to perform any work other than overcoming the biasing namely weight 26. Even the operation of a switch by the weight of the material can introduce variables making the we'igling operation less dependable. The material in the pan merely moves a key member (knife tip 29) into the orbit of a constantly moving trip device (wheel 32) which, thus eifectuated, performs all the necessary work of actuating the stop device (divider 52) to instantly prevent further delivery to the pan and operating the pan to spill the weighed out material from the pan. Other feed and delivery, weighing, trip, keying and stop devices could be used without discarding the eneral combination, although the specine forms have advantages. For example, in delivering the stream of material to the pan, the drum feeder l is better than prior feeders because it permits accurate control and variation of the delivery speed. With less exact control erratic surges would be likely to cause excesses in the final weight, especially if the maximum desired speed were normally maintained. The drum feeder also lends itself readily to provision of a plurality of side-by-side scales.

At the present time twelve scales are used, and twenty will be provided in the nest machine. Each of them fills a separate hole g; bin All of these holding bins are dumped simultaneously to fill the same number of receptacles 2: on the conveyor. The conveyor may move continuously if the receptacles are reasonably longer length wise of the conveyor than the corresponding dimension of the chutes l The conveyor may dump the successive rece taclee into a bag filling spout with accurately timed intervals by passing around a small sprocket. The two lines of receptacles 25 are staggered so that if they deliver to the same spout the timing is still uniform. With uniform timing a good operator can apply bags to receive 66 charges a minute.

With some materials (such as granulated sugar) the successive increments of material would be uniform enough so as to amount to a uniform stream and provide uniform fills if the ti ling of the interruption is uniform. W ith nuts. however, each smaller pocket 43 may hold only one nut and would vary in and exceptionally large ones might even be brushed out by brush 6'. Accordingly it is preferred to so space the pockets that the wei hing and the flipping of divider it can be completed between the falling of charges from adjacent pockets i. The quick tripping mechanism permits these pockets to be quite close together. The frequency with gates ll are opened must be timed for the slowest instances of filling h0lding bins Eli. Hence the dependability of drum 1 and the speed of the tripping mechanism combine to permit a high frequency of cycles of the Ina-- chine to yield a substantially higher speed than was formerly believed possible with equal accuracy. This is especially important where a multiplicity of weighing units is combined with a jointly timed release (for example, to fill the re ceptacles on one conveyor).

The brush l is preferably adjustable toward or from the drum l to vary the quantity of fill. The draftsman has shown it somewhat to the left of its preferred position, which is at the top of drum I. Any convenient means for agitating the material in hopper 8 may be provided,

such as 'sinuous'wiresextending around and carried by drum .l between the various series of pockets, none .showing in the plane of Figure l which is through one series of pockets.

When large nuts .or pieces of material are present, it may be desired to have the smaller pockets or the later ones thereof offset from the main pockets axially of the drum and pass or through a different hopper with smaller pi ces of material "so that there will be less overweight. When just a few large articles are to be packaged, the main or first pocket need not be larger than the others.

The pan 9 may hang freely from the Weighing beam [3 during weighing if desired for more cer tain or obvious accuracy, although the illustrated arrangement is accurate according to present standards.

In the illustrated apparatus support 28 is effective only at the time the first fill is deposited in pan 9. With other heavier articles, such as oranges, or even with some of the heavier varie ties of nuts, it may be desirable to have support is effective momentarily at the time each fill is deposited. This may be accomplished by the provision of additional, appropriately placed risers on cam 6'7.

We claim:

1. Apparatus for weighing out a predetermined weight of material including a scale having a pen, means for biasing the pan to a predetermined weighing position, means for delivering material to said pan with small increments predetermine weight is approached, s atus also including a deflector having ectig position for diverting the delivery of material to errclude it from the pan, trip means constantly moving but normally ineffective and rendered effective upon initial movement of the pan to trip said deflector to said deflecting'po ion, being free 'to make said initial movement without performing any worlr other than overcoming said biasing means.

2. Apparatus for weighing out a predetermined wei ht of material including a scale having a pan,

means for biasing the pan to a predetermined weighing position, means for delivering material to said pan with small increments as he predetermined weight is approached, said apparatus also including a deflector having a deflecting posi tion for diverting the delivery of material to ozoclude it from the an, trip means constantly moving but normally ineffective and rendered effective upon initial movement of the pan trip said deflector to said deflecting position empty said pan, said nan being free to make said initial movement without performing work other than overcoming said biasing means.

3. Apparatus for weighing out a predetermined weight of material including a scale having a pan pivoted thereto, means for biasing the scale to move the pan to a predetermined weighing position, means for delivering material to said pan with small increments as the predetermined weight is approached, said pan including a deflector which, in deflecting position, diverts to discharge material approaching the pan, trip means constantly moving but normally ineffective and rendered effective upon initial movement of the pan to trip said pan to spill its contents and move the deflector to said deflecting position, said pan being free to make said initial movement without performing any work other than overcoming said biasing means.

4. Apparatus for weighing out a predetermined Weight of material including a scale having a pan pivoted thereto, 1 ans for biasinathe scale to move the pan to a predetermined we1ghfor delivering mate ial to rents the predeter" p n including setting p o t of the to trip 1 if r! ts and move the he tire upon pan. to

mined weigh a pen, in

ins for deliversm l. increments is pproached, said stop means having a ap "he delivery 2 cans constantly ing the preacterm t1 1: also incl trip said j ment ovcrcon'iing sai mined Weight ing' a scale havi pan to prede" for delivering the i vohimetrically a 'eria t. sored incl i approached, c

upon ini" said lacy to it further.

f nding a scale havmovablc with 541 beam member havin Jon rotating in an orbit positioned. ah ;ac'.. Y the key and moving in the direction to move the l: 1 in the direction is moved by that which it Weighs, and effective upon initial movement of the beam to engage said key to take control of said beam and move it further; said key being yieldably carried by beam.

9. A Weighing machine including a scale having a free-Weighing beam, a key carried by the beam, a constantly rotating member having projections thereon rotating in an orbit positioned adjacent to the key and moving in the direction to move the beam in the direction it is moved by that which it Weighs, and effective upon initial. movement of the beam to engage said key to take control of said beam and move it further and means for separating said rotating member and said key to permit said beam to return to the starting position.

10. A weighing machine including a scale haying a free-Weighing beam, a key carried by the beam, a constantly rotating member having projections thereon rotating in an orbit positioned. adjacent to the key and moving in direction to move the beam in the direction it is moved by that which it Weighs, and effective upon initial movement of the beam to engage said key to talae control of said beam and move it further and a Weighing pan pivoted to said beam and means for obstructing the movement of part of said pan to tilt it more than the tilting of the beam and spill "he contents therefrom.

1].. A Weighing machine including a scale having a free-weighing beam, a control member to be operated when a predetermined weight is reached, a constanth rotating member having projections thereon, and a key positioned during Weighing adjacent to the orbit of the projections, carried by the beam and movable by initial movemerit of the beam into said orbit to render one of said projections effective for operating said control member.

DONALD E. CLOUD. WILLIAM S. CLOUD.

References Cited in the file of this patent

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